U.S. Pat. No. 3,459,466 issued to J. A. Giordmaine on Aug. 5, 1969 and assigned to The Bell Telephone Laboratories, describes an optical beam peak power amplifier and buncher. Essentially, this patent teaches the concept of breaking up a light beam into spatially separated portions and thence subjecting the spatially separated portions to different delay times so that the same can be reassembled to all occur at a single moment in time. In my U.S. Pat. No. 3,684,346 issued Aug. 15, 1972 there is described an optical integrating system which accomplishes an integration of spatially and time separated light pulses into a single large pulse of light by utilizing delay techniques, and in this respect, the basic principle of "bunching" is the same as disclosed in the first-mentioned Giordmaine patent. However, in my later U.S. Pat. No. 3,684,346, a unique delay arrangement utilizing fiber optics is disclosed in combination with a special reflective crystal capable of generating progressively increasing annular rings of light. This arrangement and special reflective crystal was not known prior to the publication of my referred to patent and constitutes a specific improvement on the basic concepts involved.
Notwithstanding the particular system already known and as set forth in my above referred-to U.S. Pat. No. 3,684,346, there still exists a need to provide a more practical type of time delay means for realizing the desired end of generating high amplitude pulses of light so that fully practical systems can be developed and utilized.